My loneliest day - MHAW 2022

It's mental health week, and the focus is on loneliness. If you know me, you'll know I am not big on sharing things about my personal life, but I hope my story will help someone in the spirit of this week.

The story starts during lockdown 1.0. We, like many businesses, furlough as many staff as we possibly can and cut out the business to the bone with the purest of intentions to save as many jobs as possible. Furlough, though, is challenging for so many people regardless of the fact we covered salary at 100% because many people value themselves by the contribution they bring to their work. Here they are being told we can afford to sit you on the bench, knowing a smaller group of unbenched are working doubly hard to make sure there is a job for them to return to.?

As a director of two businesses, this led to crazy hours and doing everything I could to ensure everyone was safe.?

During this time, one of my sisters took her own life, unable to cope with the solitude and pressure of lockdown. My sister had her demons with drink and drugs. I took three days off work, arranged for her to be cremated, collected her ashes, and spread them where her twin sister who passed birth. During that time, I still took phone calls. I still did work. After all, it was lockdown 1.0. Nobody could take a holiday, so I would still be around, right?

I told my boss and nobody else my sister had passed. There was nothing they could do, and they needed to focus on saving jobs by performing well.?

During that time, I contacted all my family members and told them what had happened and what I was doing. I couldn't, however, make contact with my autistic sibling (we use sibling as the agreed term as they are transgender), which isn't uncommon as anyone with an autistic family member will know they can forget phones exist. After a week or so, I contacted their supported living sponsor to find out the sponsor had died three months ago and their kids had sold the house, making my sibling homeless.

It was lockdown 1.0. How on earth was I going to find my sibling, make sure they have a roof over their head and tell them about our sister while working god knows how many hours to try and save people jobs.

So, I did the classic British thing and repressed the hell out of everything.?

I worked, found my sibling, ensured they were in a good situation, and saved as many jobs as I could, but before lockdown 3.0, we needed to make redundancies. In January 2021, I knew I was done and handed in my notice. My boss at the time was great and offered me a break, but I knew I needed to close this chapter in my life fully to move on. I did, however, agree to stay on until the end of the financial year (7 months), so they could find a replacement and we could close a contract I had been working on for many years.?

I agreed not to tell a soul I was leaving. We didnt want to jeopardise the contract or destabilise the businesses until there was a replacement. Burdened by the last 12 months, I wasn't at my best; surviving each day felt like an achievement, but I muddled through, dragging my head off the pillow, being horrible to those near me and avoiding speaking to anyone. I became a pro at faking my commitment to the future so that people would be confident in the business and so the sticking plaster that was my head didnt come spilling out. I stopped replying to friends in WhatsApp groups as I didnt have the energy. I was isolating myself more and more to avoid what was going on in my head.

The darkest day finally arrived on a day when we have a meeting of all our directors, department heads and directors of other units to come together to report on the performance of a business. It got to my section, and in front of everyone, it was said,?'we don't want to hear what you have to say. We?don't believe it, and?I?and X will be making decisions about the future leadership of this department.'

This is when I finally broke as?'Me & X'?were the only two people who knew I was leaving, the hurt and pain I was suffering. They were even interviewing for my replacement two days before.?

At that moment, I was shattered and said nothing to the surprise of many because how I felt about myself had just been articulated. At that moment, I felt entirely responsible for my sister's death, my sibling's homelessness period, and people's redundancies. My ineptitude was the reason so many had so little, and due to my isolating myself from others and keeping things from everyone, I felt truly alone in my torment.?

After that, I left and took a break. I know how lucky I am that I could afford to take some time off. I was stuck in a digital prison that I needed to escape from, and thankfully I did. Every hour 2 men take their own lives in the UK. I have learned through this that issues, pressures and problems can compound into a massive pressure over time. If you try and ignore them at some point, it may explode, allowing someone to see you need help, but if it implodes, you can end up in a very dark lonely place.?

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